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Saturday, March 31, 2012

Murder at the Four Deuces

Thursday night we threw a 1920's themed Murder Mystery Party, or "Cena con Delitto" at the villa, which was transformed into the opening night of the Four Deuces speakeasy, with many important gangsters, politicians, and lovely ladies in attendance. The students were such good sports, with each person taking their role in the event very seriously, right down to their flapper hairstyles, rolled cigars, and Italo-American gangster accents. I'd always wanted a Great Gatsby party at the villa, but this was probably even more eventful than one of those ever could be!

One of my students, David, came up with the idea to do the murder mystery party and was my co-host for the evening. Of course, this means I took care of logistics and he took care of pizazz, and on the whole I'd say our partnership was the bee's knees.

Everyone was mingling and enjoying their hooch as several shocking confrontations went down between Big Jim Ravioli, the leader of the family if you know what I mean, and various guests. He soon got bumped off and it was our job as well as that of the inspector (who was just as suspicious as the rest of us) to get to the bottom of it.

I played the role of Henry Hooch (there are never enough boys in our program), a man eagerly trying to break into the gold mine that is prohibition. The irony of this character was too hard to resist because generally it's my job to keep hooch out of my student's clutches, not try to arrange business deals with them about how to illegally import it.

I wasn't the only person playing with gender roles this evening, and the congress(wo)man certainly won the crowd's approval with his/her hyperbolic mustache, securing the award for Best Costume!

As the evening progressed, several weapons were discovered and more homicides tainted the party. Apparently, Big Jim had beef with a lot of people. The crowd continued to bribe, steal from, and extort each other as suspicions escalated, until finally the inspector came back with the results of his weapons tests and everyone cast their votes for who the original killer was.

As it turns out, Rebecca Ravioli murdered her father, Big Jim, because he disapproved of her relationship. When I told my own father about the resolution of our little game, he said, "Ok, I'll keep that in mind, thanks."

Travel Size Me

Back in the Bay after one year at l'Università di Bologna and two working for Georgetown at Villa Le Balze in Florence, I'm delighted and determined to make this American chapter in my life as blog-worthy as the last. And if some gelato sneaks its way in, well really I just can't help that.